Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Tutorial Tuesday: Fishtail Braid

Hello and welcome to the third Tutorial Tuesday! I'm really excited about today's design because I love how the whole manicure turned out. I'm actually still wearing this design on my nails as I type this, which is pretty unusual. So enough introductory chatter- let's jump right in!

I already posted these nails on Instagram on Sunday, but saved this blog post for Tutorial Tuesday. This fishtail design is one that I came up with last spring. I've actually done a photo tutorial before for it, but I decided to redo it for Instagram. I changed it up by using four colours instead of three, and I also think that these new instructions are easier to understand.

I'm very pleased with how this manicure turned out. The gradient came out nicely despite being very finicky, and I'm enjoying these colours together. The ones I used are Essie Nice Is Nice, Essie Play Date, American Apparel Summer Peach, and China Glaze Kinetic Candy. I think they're perfect and refreshing for the spring/summer season :)

'Sketch' out your fishtail design using your darkest colour and a striping brush. These lines do not have to be neat. Paint lines starting from the tip of the nail, following the direction and order of the lines in the photo.

Continue doing this, working your way to the cuticle.

Fill in the section at the tip of your nail using the brush from the polish. From there, fill in the very next section that doesn't touch the first section, i.e. skip two sections. It's okay to paint over your sketch lines, but be careful not to paint into other sections.

Repeat filling in sections with your next colour.

In the sections that still have the base colour showing through create thin diagonal lines down the middle, parallel to the direction of the section.

Create small diagonal lines on each side of the line from Step 6 for a leaf-like pattern.

Go over all of your sketch lines again to neaten everything up.

Finish with top coat to smooth out all of the polish, clean up, and you're done!

I hope that you liked this tutorial! If you try out this design I'd love to see photos of your nails! You can comment with them below, tweet them to me or tag me on Instagram! (See links below or on my sidebar). And please leave suggestions for more tutorials that you would like to see! :)

First of all, this is really weird because I just saw a design I liked and it was a fishtail with a tribal print, and then I googled it to find more designs and found an older post of yours using browns and blue, which I really liked, and then I saw this and I was like"omg, that is so weird because I just saw a tribal fishtail today". Anyway.... I just want to say that you have, like, the BEST tribal print nails ever. They are always so cute. And I think you should get Pinterest, so I can pin your designs easier. Because they are all so awesome.